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You Write Too Long: This Week's Feature Bite-Sized

This week, "Christmas at Woodfin Suites:" Some of the immigrant maids at the Emeryville hotel are caught in a classic bind: Just as their arduous working conditions (try cleaning seventeen suites in a workday) were being improved by that city's Measure C, the hotel began accusing some longtime workers of not having valid Social Security cards, setting off the "no-match" tripwires in the federal government's immigration machinery. Now the maids are fighting for their right to do the truly heavy lifting. With all due respect to author Barbara Ehrenreich, who had another job to go back to after writing her books on the cruel realities of America's working poor, the Woodfin hotel workers are the ones really being nickel-and-dimed. And their American dream has turned sour.